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One of them was born in Brno; the other spent most of his life there. Aside from that, they differed in every respect. Die tote Stadt – an opera by the 23-year-old Erich Korngold, the compositional Wunderkind whose ballet Der Schneemann had scored triumphs ten years earlier at the Vienna Hofoper – was sought out by two theatres at once. The world première took place on 4 December 1920, simultaneously in Hamburg and Köln. The Köln production was conducted by Otto Klemperer himself, and the roles of Marie/Marietta and Juliette were played by his wife, Johanna Geisler. For the next several years, the work scored an uninterrupted series of triumphs all over the world. Despite its enthusiastically-received première at the Národní divadlo in Brno (23 November 1921), Kát’a Kabanová – a mature masterpiece by the 67-year-old Janáček – suffered disaster a year later in Prague; and a week later, at the same Theater in der Glockengasse in Köln under the baton of the same Klemperer, an even worse one – so ignominious that the second showing never came to pass. Die tote Stadt appeared at the right time – it helped people to overcome their mourning of sons, husbands and fiancés killed during the Great War, as well as the victims of the deadly Spanish flu epidemic that had moved from the front and the POW camps to the civil population. Kát’a was a record of Janáček’s personal tragedy – his obsessive, unrequited love for Kamila Stösslová, the young married woman who also stood behind every note of The Cunning Little Vixen, the Glagolitic Mass and String Quartet no. 2.

I had been gearing up for the new staging of Kát’a Kabanová at the Opéra National de Lorraine for a long time. I had let someone drag me to a showing of Korngold’s opera at Semperoper Dresden a week before the première in Nancy, above all hoping to erase my bad impressions from the production at Warsaw’s Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera: the horrifically-cast role of Paul, the orchestra playing without the faintest idea of the youthful Austrian Jew’s sources of inspiration, not to mention Mariusz Treliński’s directorial perspective, which was as spectacular as it was nonsensical. Unfortunately, David Bösch did not resist the temptation to ‘literalize’ the libretto, which is loosely based on threads from Georges Rodenbach’s Symbolist novel Bruges-la-Morte. The gloomy Bruges, covered by a network of slimy canals, is above all a metaphor for possessive femininity – both in the literary prototype and in the somewhat trivialized text of Die tote Stadt. It manipulates the mind of the widower in deep mourning, ‘returns’ his beloved Maria to him in the form of an imperfect double, pushes him to commit a crime – in Rodenbach’s work, a real one; and in Erich and his father Julius’ libretto, playing out in Paul’s tormented imagination. For all of this to strike an equally tender chord in the viewer as nearly 100 years ago, this tale needs to be left in a sphere of ambiguity. Meanwhile, Bösch lays out for the audience in the simplest possible terms that everything is taking place in the protagonist’s head. Instead of leaving us eye to eye with the monster-city, he treats us to a Freudian psychoanalysis with elements of Gestalt therapy. In his vision, there is no place for any contrast: everything is tainted by decay. Paul is stuck in his neglected petit bourgeois apartment, staring at a hideously ugly portrait of Maria, finding no comfort either in the words of his faithful servant Brigitta, who is more like a slovenly cleaning lady, or in the tirades of Frank, who is as broken as he himself is, and imprisoned in a wheelchair. He sees his dead wife in a woman too vulgar: oddly angular in motion for a dancer, clothed in a tacky-looking dress, behaving like a juvenile nymphomaniac. The production takes on a bit of colour in Act II, when Paul wanders in the night among the canals of Bruges – subtly suggested by Patrick Bannwart’s stage design – ending up among parades of nuns and commedia dell’arte characters, mixed in with figures of omnipresent death. It culminates in a procession scene illustrated with spectacular projections in Act III, after which it again sinks into the stuffily disordered apartment of Paul, who in desperation commits the supposed murder of Marietta. In the finale, there is no hope: the ‘resurrected’ dancer returns for her umbrella and leaves; the widower – after a final conversation with his friend – curls up in a ball in the dirty floor, cradling a curl of Marie’s golden hair. The mourning continues – contrary to the composer’s intentions and the sounds of the celesta dissolving into nothingness.

Die tote Stadt. Burkhard Fritz (Paul). Photo: David Baltzer.

In musical terms, on the other hand, the Dresden production took me to seventh heaven. The Staatskapelle, under the baton of Dmitri Jurowski, probably managed to convince all undecided parties that Korngold’s score is closer to the works of Zemlinsky and Mahler than to the hits of the Viennese operetta. In its transparent textures, swinging rhythms and subtly-shaded colours of individual orchestra sections lurked evil and salvation, longing for times past and sadness overcome by hope for a better tomorrow. In the rendition of Burkhard Fritz – possessed of an intonationally secure, not too expansive in terms of volume but surprisingly warm-sounding Heldentenor – Paul turned out to be a fragile but at the same time mature man, able – the director’s concept notwithstanding – to face his own emotions. In vocal terms, he surpassed Manuela Uhl (Marie/Marietta), a big dramatic soprano tainted by quite stentorian vocal production and horrific diction, though I must admit that in ‘Glück das mir verblieb’ from Act I, she came out surprisingly well in her duet with Fritz, trying rather to melt into the lyrical phrasing of her partner than to outshout him. Beautiful creations of Frank and Fritz were produced by Chistoph Pohl, who sings with a round, superbly-placed, though in terms of dynamics not-too-nuanced baritone. Among the players of the supporting roles, worthy of mention is the deep contralto Tichina Vaught, perfect in terms of character in the role of Brigitta.

Christoph Pohl (Fritz) and Manuela Uhl (Marietta). Photo: David Baltzer.

My trip to Dresden confirmed me in my conviction that their musicians are masters, while the Warsaw production wasted the potential of Korngold’s youthful score – which, while perhaps not too innovative, is technically superb and very well planned-out in dramaturgical terms. I went to Nancy with the Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera’s shocking production of Kát’a Kabanová from nearly eight years ago (directed by David Alden with Expressionist stage design by Charles Edwards) in my memory. In the capital of Lorraine, Janáček’s masterpiece was to take on a form proposed by David Himmelmann – a German known to Polish music lovers above all for a fragment from a Bregenz production of Tosca that played a prominent role in the James Bond film Quantum of Solace. His most recent staging, from a bit under a year ago, a Tosca at the Osterfestspiele Baden-Baden, did not inspire any great enthusiasm among critics; however, it must be admitted that Himmelmann is an experienced stage director with a solid musical education, which is perhaps why he felt justified in picking a bit at the material of the work.

However, one must also bear in mind that picking at Janáček’s ideally-constructed operas can turn out to be of disastrous effect. Kát’a Kabanová superficially gives the impression of an older and more bitter sister of Jenůfa. Kabanicha appears to be a ghostly caricature of Kostelnička; the title character, the hounded victim of a narrow-minded community that will finally drive her to suicide; her two men, Tichon and Boris, distorted emanations of the characters of Števa and Laca, the two perpetrators of the misfortune of the dishonoured girl from a Moravian village. This is not the way to go. As I wrote some time ago now, the key to understanding both Kát’a and its literary prototype, i.e. Alexander Ostrovsky’s The Tempest, is knowledge of the social history of Russia. Into this precise analysis of the conditions lying at the foundations of Russian despotism, into this commendation of passive resistance and painful hymn to freedom regained by death, Janáček wove the experience of his own unhappy feelings for Kamila Stösslová. Kát’a Kabanová is, however, a perversely optimistic opera: it is not Jenůfa, but the unfaithful wife of Tichon who shatters the found order of things. She overcomes fear, shame and moral scruples to admit with reckless courage to her guilt. Kát’a knows that the truth is going to come out regardless, so she takes matters into her own hands. She throws off the yoke imposed upon her and sets off on a journey. It is a pity that in her case, it will be at once her first and last – into the dark current of the Volga – but after all, one has to begin somewhere.

Kát’a Kabanová. Trystan Llŷr Griffiths (Kudrjaš) and Peter Wedd (Boris). Photo: Opéra National de Lorraine.

Russian libertarians understood Ostrovsky’s message, as did Janáček – giving Kát’a perhaps the most expansive and internally-nuanced role in his entire operatic œuvre. Most stage directors, even if they don’t have a thorough knowledge of this text’s conditions, do instinctively distribute the accents in accordance with the composer’s will. Himmelmann decided to do otherwise. He placed the entire action of the opera in an enclosed space – otherwise phenomenally arranged on a two-level stage and, thanks to the masterful work of the technicians, maintained in continual silent motion – probably with the intent of emphasizing the atmosphere of growing oppression (stage design by David Hohmann). As a result, he weakened the tension contained in the libretto and the score, for it is not without reason that Janáček shifts the action back and forth between the banks of the Volga and the stuffy interiors of the merchant’s home. The German stage director shifted the action into the unspecified realities of Eastern Europe and equally indeterminate contemporary times (judging from Lili Wanner’s costumes, the 1980s). He shut his protagonists up in a two-floor hotel-boarding house clearly run by Kabanicha. When there was no more reason for the protagonists to be present onstage, he packed them into the elevator, closed the hotel room doors behind them, or threw them into the wings. He turned all of the characters into one-dimensional caricatures. Kabanicha is a truly farcical hag; Tichon, a pitiful mama’s boy; Boris, a common coward; Varvara and Kudrjaš, a pair of thoughtless egoists who will flee to Moscow at the first opportunity; and Kát’a, a neurotic, sexually frustrated woman overtaken by guilt feelings. This interpretation of the main protagonist was emphatically highlighted by Himmelmann in the finale: when the scenery had finally disappeared from the stage, revealing the black abyss of the Volga (actually a very good idea), the farewell with Boris turned out to be a hallucination of Kát’a, who was obliged to dialogue with a partner hidden in the wings.

Helena Juntunen (Kát’a). Photo: Opéra National de Lorraine.

It is amazing that with this kind of stage direction, the soloists did not get lost in their roles, and put on a masterful display of singing in accordance with Janáček’s idiom. Helena Juntunen – a technically superb Finnish soprano gifted with a dark and deep voice, but surprisingly girlish in expression – created a well thought-out interpretation of the character of Kát’a, highlighted by a perfect understanding of the text and skill in picking out its characteristic micro-motifs (with phenomenally ‘torn’ sentences in the scene preceding the suicide). Superbly blended with her dense soprano was the metallic tenor of Peter Wedd (Boris), who –  thanks to abundant experience in the Wagner repertoire – did not fall into falsetto even once, and in several places showed a today-rare ability to sing a sonorous piano on a long, beautifully-closed phrase (for example, the brilliant ‘Jste to vy, Katerino Petrovno?’). In vocal terms, Éric Huchet fully equaled him as Tichon – brighter in tone, superb in articulation, convincing as an actor in the completely unconvincing role imposed upon him by the stage director. Leah-Marian Jones, who too often replaced singing with noisy melo-recitation, did not do as well. I don’t know, however, if anyone would be able to adapt the role of Kabanicha to such a concept for the interpretation of this character. An excellent performance was turned in by Eléonore Pancrazi and Trystan Llŷr Griffiths in the roles of Varvara and Kudrjaš. Aleksander Teliga once again successfully portrayed Dikój, though his Czech sounds as enigmatic as the Polish of Mestwin in the recent Poznań staging of Legend of the Baltic.

The real hero of the evening, however, turned out to be the conductor. Mark Shanahan brought out of this score the entire essence of Janáček’s late style: the contrasts of textures and motifs; utilization of instruments in unusual registers and, accordingly, surprising colouristic effects; polyrhythmic linking of measures; sudden changes of tempo. Most importantly, however, he did not try to forcibly ‘prettify’ Kát’a or smooth out its rough edges. Where necessary, he told the instruments to scream; elsewhere, to sob; yet elsewhere, to flow in waves like the Volga. And when the narrative required silence, he masterfully played silence in the orchestra. I do not doubt that he worked with equally meticulous care on the shape of every vocal phrase.

What I ought to do now is wrap both of these shows up with a metaphorical ribbon and carefully place them in the treasury of my memory. I shall not hear such intelligently and solidly prepared performances any time soon. With all certainty – and that, soon – I shall see less intelligent stagings.

Translated by: Karol Thornton-Remiszewski

Rusalka has returned to Leipzig after 47 years of silence. In scenery like something out of a fairy tale: on the first Sunday of Advent, under the full moon, in a cloud of flakes from the first snowfall. Not even a week later, before the second showing, the city was preparing for another snowstorm. In such windy and cold weather, it was that much easier to realize how very cruel a fairy tale it is. The presence of Rusalka was palpable everywhere. Looking out from the posters hanging in the streets was a half-naked nymph with sad eyes rimmed with dark circles from waiting in vain for her beloved. The Leipzig Opera – unassuming in the daytime and blossoming in its full beauty only at night, like Vodník’s daughter – had distanced itself even more from the Gewandhaus building, soulless as the Prince, standing on the opposite edge of the square. Between the late-born child of Socialist Classicism and the icon of DDR brutalism, a thick forest of Christmas trees and market stalls had grown up, taking the place of the long-since-emptied pond with the fountain. Despite the appearances of carefree holiday cheer, it would be difficult to find a better metaphor for loneliness and alienation.

Since the world premiere of Dvořák’s masterpiece, nearly 117 years have passed. Rusalka has stood the test of time. Today, there are few who dismiss this gloomy tale of devotion and egoism, of vain transgression of boundaries and love that comes too late. A true fairy tale, impossible to play out at any specific time and place, which would destroy the universality of its message. It was aptly interpreted by Antony McDonald, the creator of one of the most beautiful stagings of the last quarter century, recently revived on the stage of the Scottish Opera. In his perspective, the ‘wrong-side-out siren’ came out of the fairytale woods straight into the decadent early 20^th-century bourgeois world. Dutchman Michiel Dijkema, a stage director and designer who has for years been active mainly at German theaters, went a similar route, but distributed the accents differently. In the Leipzig Rusalka, it is the Prince who is trying to find his place in a world foreign to him. The action plays out in a forest so dark that you can’t even see the trees; in clouds of fog enshrouding an invisible lake; in a kingdom of primal forces to which not only human beings, but even a water spirit pretending to the name of human will be subject. Dijkema’s Rusalka is no red-haired beauty: she is a grotesque, lizard-like creature with a comb on her back and membranes between her fingers, as similar as two drops of water to her father Vodník (costumes by Jula Reindell). Her companions, the wood nymphs, have taken the form of hideous swamp demons with broad hips and long, sagging breasts. The witch Ježibaba brings to mind associations with the Slavic demon of death and transgression: a being gifted with great wisdom that she is able to use against daredevils impinging upon the natural order of things.

Tuomas Pursio (Vodník in the premiere cast) with Magdalena Hinterdobler, Sandra Maxheimer and Sandra Fechner as Wood Nymphs. Photo: Kirsten Nijhof

The Prince steps into this fairy tale and does not want to leave, even though it is he who is the intruder. In pursuit of the white doe, he unceremoniously drives into the forest in an all-terrain vehicle and shines his headlights in the animal’s eyes. He does not invite guests to his palace, but rather organizes his wedding reception at the edge of the lake. The Gamekeeper and the Kitchen Boy prepare the game in the open air, under cover of night, after which they sneakily pack it into a van labeled ‘Čerstvé kvalita masa’. But after all, Dijkema is not suggesting a simple clash of the contemporary world with that of myth. He is rather unveiling a mechanism of mutual, though disproportionate ‘inculturation’ of the two worlds. Ježibaba would look like she had been taken straight out of Les Ballets Russes’ Le coq d’or in Goncharova’s staging, were it not for one detail: in Act III, Dijkema and Reindell have supplemented her gaudy, lavishly embroidered costume with a down vest. Meanwhile, the Prince comes out onstage in an extravagant antique crown, like a fairytale prince. In the manner of a rich tourist in the Himalayas who parades on the trail in Nepali silk trousers, driving before him a porter in a baseball cap. No one here feels at home. Everything is laced with fear. The dark forest has slipped out of the locals’ control, and treats new arrivals with open enmity.

There are a few extraordinarily powerful theatrical gestures in this show. The moment when Ježibaba unwraps Rusalka from the blood-soaked quilt, takes a knife and mercilessly scrapes the rest of the scales off the half-conscious girl. The moment when the Prince tries to attract this injured creature to himself and begins making stupid faces. There are several superb and well-played ideas, among them the subtly-made suggestion that the Foreign Princess and Ježibaba are one and the same person: the witch’s matted mane is entangled with a chicken foot with a bone sticking out, while the perfidious seductress appears at the wedding in a chicken claw-shaped brocade hat. Dijkema had a bit more difficulty outlining the characters of the individual roles – aside from the titular Rusalka, who was polished in every detail. The Prince too lightly spurns Rusalka – and that, in favour of a Princess completely bland in character. Vodník pities himself more than he despairs over the loss of his daughter. The concept of the finale – despite minor inconsistencies – is nonetheless stunning. The Prince finds Rusalka not after a few days of madness, but after years of wandering: broken like a character from a Shakespeare tragedy. He is truly looking for death and happily finds it. Despite everything, a bitter relief is hidden in the final duet of the old man and the grey-haired Rusalka, though the nymph will pay a higher price for her past hasty decision.

Olena Tokar (Rusalka) and Peter Wedd (Prince). Photo: Kirsten Nijhof

It has been a long time since I have heard and seen onstage such a convincing creator of the title role as the very young Olena Tokar, who by some miracle managed to combine girlish vocal expression with a beautifully round, darkly-coloured voice, intonationally secure, enriched with a warm and soft vibrato. Aside from this, Tokar is a superb actress, conscious both of her own body and of the dramatic potential brought into the narrative by the act of singing in and of itself. I still have in my ears and before my eyes her desperate ‘Ježibabo! Pomoz!’, not to mention the final ‘Za tvou lásku, za tu krásu tvou’, which in her interpretation sounded almost like the love transfiguration of Isolde. Peter Wedd – the only guest in the premiere cast, otherwise comprised exclusively of soloists from Oper Leipzig – certainly supported her in this concept with his own experience as Tristan. I have the impression that this singer is undergoing another metamorphosis – his deep, metallic tenor is maturing more and more; it sounds like the voice of a man who carries an enormous ballast of experiences in his soul, but despite this still does not lose his youthful ardour. In Glasgow, Wedd sang on a somewhat broader breath and with a more open top register: the minor deficiencies of the Leipzig performance, however, I shall chalk up to the process of familiarizing himself with a new, considerably more interesting concept for of the role of the Prince as a tragic character. In the role of Ježibaba, Karin Lovelius did superbly, though in Act I, she had a bit of trouble making fluid transitions between registers. A somewhat weaker performance was turned in by Kathrin Göring, whose role as the Foreign Princess clearly is not a good match for her, even in terms of acting – I was particularly disappointed with her final duet with the Prince from Act II, where sparks should be simply showering the audience from the stage. Words of sincere recognition for their musicality and sense of humor are due to the performers of all of the character roles: Jonathan Mitchie (Gamekeeper), Mirjam Neururer (Kitchen Boy) and the three wonderful Wood Nymphs (Magdalena Hinterdobler, Sandra Maxheimer and Sandra Fechner). Gifted with a gorgeous, well-managed bass-baritone, Vladimir Baykov (whom Varsovians remember as a superb Mephistopheles from Faust under stage director Robert Wilson at the Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera) created a moving character of Vodník, though he could still do with more paternal authority.

Act III, finale. Olena Tokar and Peter Wedd. Photo: Kirsten Nijhof

The soloists performed their tasks considerably better than expected – despite the very difficult acoustics of the Opera in Leipzig and negligible support from conductor Christoph Gedschold. The Gewandhaus-Orchester played, as always, competently and with a beautiful, clear sound, but decidedly too loudly, disregarding most of the dynamic and agogical nuances in this extraordinary score; but more importantly, without looking at the singers. The most tender piano passages and masterfully-shaped phrases were sometimes drowned in a flood of tutti; the conductor either didn’t give the soloists time to bring the sound out properly, or quite the contrary – left them on the battlefield with an occasional harsh note. Dvořák’s masterpiece, instead of breathing and pulsating with the rhythm of an enchanted forest, went evenly from measure to measure, moving inexorably toward a far-from-subtle finale. It is a pity that a true specialist in the Czech composer’s music didn’t occupy the podium – a pity all the greater that, having at his disposal such a cast and such an experienced orchestral ensemble, he could have crushed hearts of stone. And even turned the accursed Rusalka back from her way to the depths of the lake.

Translated by: Karol Thornton-Remiszewski

I have already wrung my hands so many times over the fate of composers wronged by history and of their operas – unjustly eliminated from the repertoire and returning with difficulty to the world’s stages – that I have no words left for Meyerbeer. This Jew born in Germany, educated in Italy, scoring triumphs in Paris in the heyday of grand opéra’s glory, became the victim of a tangle of exceptionally unfortunate circumstances. Meyerbeer’s downfall was caused by, among others, Wagner – his one-time protégé who at first declared that he owed his mind, heart and lifelong gratitude to him for pointing his creative work in a salutary direction, but after the première of Le Prophète made an abrupt about-turn expressed in, among other things, the infamous pamphlet Das Judenthum in der Musik. And here he had drawn upon this music in fistfuls, not only in Rienzi and Der fliegende Holländer: without Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots, there would have been no Act II of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Chopin proclaimed Robert le diable a masterpiece right after its Paris world première; a year later, he composed the Grand Duo concertant for piano and ’cello, one of the few chamber pieces in his œuvre, based on motifs from a Meyerbeer opera. Shortly after the success of Le Prophète, Liszt wrote the monumental Fantasy and Fugue on ‘Ad nos, ad salutarem undam’ – the chilling chorale stylization sung by the Anabaptists. Meyerbeer – the father of full-blooded music drama, a peerless master of orchestration, a phenomenal melodist who squeezed the last drop of sweat out of the singers, while never fighting against the natural capabilities of the human voice – fell into oblivion together with the twilight of grand historical opera; and since he had taken that genre to the limits of perfection, with the passage of successive decades, hopes for the resurrection of his œuvre grew dimmer. Meyerbeer’s operas disappeared from stages even before World War I. The last Polish production of Les Huguenots took place in 1903 in Lwów [modern-day Lviv, Ukraine].

Noel Bouley (Mathisen), Andrew Dickinson (Jonas) and Derek Welton (Zacharie) among the members of the Chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Photo: Bettina Stöß

Le Prophète, which once triggered a veritable paroxysm of composer’s envy in Wagner, is today mentioned above all anecdotally: as the work whose 1849 world première featured the Paris Opera stage lit for the first time in history with electric lamps, as well as dancers on roller skates in the ballet on the frozen lake at the beginning of Act III. The fact that Meyerbeer wrote the mezzo-soprano role of Fidès for Pauline Viardot, a distinguished singer and pianist, a student of Liszt and Anton Reicha, the latter of whom introduced her to the mysteries of composition, a polyglot and writer, a friend of Turgenev and Clara Schumann; that the creator of the libretto was Eugène Scribe, one of the most prolific and sought-after authors of the time, who also contributed to the successes of Robert le diable and Les Huguenots; that the subject matter of the opera fit ideally into the atmosphere of moods after the February Revolution and the bloodily suppressed June Days uprising of 1848, the failure of which put an end to the Spring of Nations in France – these things are mentioned, as it were, less often. The story of Jean de Leyde [John of Leiden], the Anabaptist leader who – after the imprisonment of Melchior Hofmann, who had proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom of God in 1533 – decided to take matters in his own hands and institute the Parousia by force, brought to mind inevitable associations with the views espoused by Utopian communists who demanded recognition of the role of the proletariat and the establishment of a classless society. The libretto of Le Prophète is gloomy; the love thread, pushed into the background; the motif of a mother loving her wayward son despite all circumstances, highlighted beyond normal measure; and the character of the protagonist, boiled down to an anti-hero role bringing to mind associations with the considerably later operas of the great Russians: Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky. Le Prophète poses a multitude of performance problems and, at the same time, is hellishly complex in dramaturgical terms. It is no wonder that it has only sporadically returned to contemporary stages and then quickly disappeared. There is no way to modernize it, nor to produce it with its original splendour – not to mention the difficulties of finding appropriate singers.

Elena Tsallagova (Berthe) and Clémentine Margaine (Fidès). Photo: Bettina Stöß

Almost everyone has now forgotten the first resurrection of Le Prophète on the stage of Deutsche Oper Berlin in 1966, with Sandra Warfield as Fidès and James McCracken in the role of Jean. The staging of the opera’s most recent première was entrusted to Olivier Py, a French director known for religiosity as well as for a tendency to introduce contemporary political allusions into his productions. In his famous Paris Aida of four years ago – to the horror of some critics and audience members – there appeared Ku Klux Klan fighters, Holocaust victims, immigrants, as well as an impressive-looking, camouflage-painted tank. His concept of Le Prophète, though equally over-simplified, turned out to be considerably more coherent: Py set the opera’s action in the realities of an indeterminate metropolis shaken by unrest, in which all of the pathologies of revolution are concentrated: physical and psychological violence, debauched sex and equally frisky religious fanaticism. It is not at all bad to watch – even, wonder of wonders, in the famous skaters’ ballet scene, played out in the form of a brutal pantomime on a rotary stage spinning at a frenzied tempo. Certain details, however, are a bit offensive – above all, the forcible introduction of the stage director’s ‘signatures’ (a half-naked angel taken, as it were, straight out of Mathis der Maler at Opéra Bastille; the final orgy in bordello red lighting; anal sex on the hood of a car – a hackneyed idea, though at least automobile lovers had the pleasure of admiring a black Mercedes W115, known in Poland by the pet name of puchacz [‘eagle owl’]). I must admit, however, that the action played out fluidly, the stage movement did not disturb the singers, and in the healing of the sick scene – accompanying Jean’s coronation in Act IV – the wheelchairs finally found proper use.

Gregory Kunde (Jean de Leyde). Photo: Bettina Stöß

But never mind Olivier Py’s controversial concept – we got a show so superbly prepared in musical terms that Wagner probably had apoplexy yet again, this time in the hereafter. Enrique Mazzola, an Italian bel canto specialist, brought every possible treat out of the score: wonderfully transparent textures, surprising details of orchestration, deep dynamic contrasts. He took Le Prophète at lively tempi, without even for a moment losing the pulse of the work as a whole, deftly highlighting Meyerbeer’s thematic play (the phenomenal entrance of the three Anabaptists with a pseudo-chorale that appears in distorted form in Act II, when Jean tells about his dream, rolls through the chorus part like a storm in Act III, and then returns as an ominous memento during the coronation scene). What turned out to be the second, collective hero of the evening was the chorus, prepared by Jeremy Bines, which sang with alertness, as well as beautiful, fluent phrasing and superbly rendered text. The third, perhaps brightest star of the show was Clémentine Margaine: her mezzo-soprano, thick as tar and velvety in sound, flowed forth with such freedom that everyone in the audience forgot about the legendary reefs and shoals in the extremely difficult role of Fidès. The light and bright soprano of Berthe (Elena Tsallagova) blended quite well with it, though in the duets, especially ‘Pour garder à ton fils le serment’, the young Russian did have a few slip-ups in intonation. Gregory Kunde (Jean) took a long time to warm up, to the detriment of my favorite aria ‘Pour Berthe, moi je soupire’, but in the triumphal hymn from the finale of Act III (‘Roi du ciel et des anges’), I felt like getting up from my seat and accompanying the false prophet. Kunde has superb technique; nonetheless, his top register lacks freedom and the spinto brilliance essential for this part – another matter that I’m not sure if anyone besides him today would be in a position to sing this role even decently. Of the three sinister Anabaptists – superbly chosen in every way – Derek Walton (Zacharie) stood out. Walton has at his disposal a beautiful, round bass-baritone, though unfortunately not sufficiently resonant at the bottom of his range. The only disappointment was Seth Carico in the role of Le Comte d’Oberthal – perhaps because a few months ago, he was so enchanting in Death in Venice. This time he too often fell into a caricature that concealed deficiencies in the musical preparation of his part.

A production of any Meyerbeer opera at such a level requires enormous financial expenditures and tons of solid work. The occasion to obtain the former was no doubt the riotously celebrated 500^th birthday of the Reformation. The zeal and professionalism of the musicians, however, cannot be overestimated. There is hope. A pity that not here in Poland, where even musicology professors are afraid to reveal their love for the composer in whose work – as Chopin wrote in a letter to Tytus Wojciechowski – ‘through the tuba sings the devil, souls from graves rise up to revel’.

Translated by: Karol Thornton-Remiszewski

Life is too short to waste time on boring performances. This is especially clear to opera house directors, who not infrequently have trouble filling the hall for shows of works from outside a narrow canon – but after all, they would like to put on something more than just La Traviata alternating with Die Zauberflöte. Opera North has decided to do something about this, finding a solution tempting not only to novices, but to discriminating connoisseurs as well. Thirteen years ago, it offered a season under the slogan Eight Little Greats: eight short operas staged by two directors, David Pountney and Christopher Alden, in collaboration with one stage designer, the now late Johan Engels, under the baton of three conductors – Martin André, David Parry and James Holmes. While the shows came in pairs, tickets were sold for individual titles – and that, at half price. It was possible to leave during the intermission or appear only during the interval. Not counting I Pagliacci, only rare works were presented at that time, among others Rachmaninov’s Francesca da Rimini and Zemlinsky’s The Dwarf. The endeavour ended in partial success: the level of the stagings turned out to be uneven, and the individual compositions – despite their modest dimensions – too hermetic and inaccessible to convince undecided parties to fritter away an evening in the company of Les Troyens or Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

Opera North has drawn conclusions from that previous lesson and returned to the Little Greats idea in 2017, but on slightly different premises. This time, there were six titles, including three from the warhorse repertoire (Cavalleria rusticana, I Pagliacci and L’enfant et les sortilèges), but combined in classic double-bills. It is another matter that the combinations sometimes turned out to be surprising; besides that, the ‘road shows’ were comprised of different elements from the première shows in Leeds. The common denominator was, once again, the stage designer – Charles Edwards, who in the case of I Pagliacci took responsibility for the entirety of the staging. All told, five stage directors were engaged, and four conductors, including Anthony Kraus, who led L’enfant et les sortilèges alternating with Martin André, a veteran of the 2004 series. Ravel’s lyric fantasy was the only work that audiences could go to separately, as part of a family matinée at the opera.

I Pagliacci. Richard Burkhard (Tonio) and Peter Auty (Canio) Photo: Tristram Kenton.

When I looked at the program of Opera North’s autumn season, what I noticed above all was Destiny (Osud) – a very rarely-performed opera by Janáček that I knew only from recordings. In Nottingham, where the Little Greats series ended up at the beginning of November, it was paired with the one-act L’enfant et les sortilèges, presenting in one evening both of the productions directed by Annabel Arden. After thinking about it for a bit, I decided to travel to the capital of the East Midlands – the temptation to see and hear these two pearls at the local Theatre Royal, one of the most beautiful Victorian theatres in the Isles, where the world première of Agatha Christie’s legendary The Mousetrap took place in 1952, turned out to be irresistible. Since I was supposed to come to Nottingham a day early anyway, I decided to go to Cavalleria rusticana and I Pagliacci, presented in a pair as usual, except in reverse order. In this case, I was motivated by curiosity about how Polish stage director Karolina Sofulak had managed with Mascagni’s opera, since she had made the quite bold decision to shift this gory tale from Sicily to the realities of the boorish Polish People’s Republic. Now I regret having forgone the two remaining elements of the series: Leonard Bernstein’s gloomy ‘musical’ Trouble in Tahiti and the comic opera Trial by Jury, one of the first fruits of the collaboration between W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, two of the greatest theater stars of Queen Victoria’s era.

Charles Edwards spared no effort to ensure that audiences remembered the Little Greats as – appearances notwithstanding – a coherent series, combined into a whole with numerous, sometimes very ingenious inside allusions. His I Pagliacci plays out in the rehearsal room of a contemporary theatre, on the walls of which hang the designs of the scenery and costumes for all six shows. The frustrated Tonio – the stage designer and, at the same time, director’s assistant – spreads out a mockup of Cavalleria rusticana on the table. The face of the clock from which the Child tore off the pendulum in Ravel’s one-act opera materializes as a symbol of the passage of time in Janáček’s opera. A shabby upright piano wanders from the studio of composer Živný to the room of the unruly Child, in which all of the objects damaged by the Child will shortly come to life. The director of the troupe from I Pagliacci sings the prologue against the background of a curtain with a group picture of the artists, which appears as an immutable prop in all of the shows in the series.

Cavalleria rusticana. Phillip Rhodes (Alfio) and Katie Bray (Lola) with the Chorus of Opera North. Photo: Robert Workman.

Of the two double-bills I saw in Nottingham, in theatrical terms Destiny paired with L’enfant et les sortilèges came out decidedly better. In Ravel’s fantasy, Annabel Arden’s vivid directorial imagination gained worthy support from both the stage designer and from Theo Clinkard, who was responsible for the stage movement. This is probably the first staging of this opera that I know of in which the contrast between the claustrophobic atmosphere of the child’s room and the seductive horror of the garden bathed in moonlight was so intelligently brought out. The excellently-directed singing actors provoked the audience to attacks of spasmodic laughter: it is difficult to keep a straight face at the sight of the Teapot with a vigorously erect spout between its legs, or the Tree Frog in pitifully stretched-out green stockings; it is even harder to forget the flirtations of the Tom Cat and the Female Cat, maintained in the poetic language of Pink Panther cartoons. Arden had a bit worse of a time with Janáček’s Osud, which is in large measure the fault of the composer, who also co-authored the libretto – it is difficult to believe that almost parallel to Jenůfa, he was creating an opera so dramaturgically incoherent and pretentious in terms of the text. Fortunately, it is not lacking in flashes of true musical genius, brought out by the stage director in Act I, which was played with bravado and at times gave one the impression of watching a Jiří Menzel film. The next two, however, dragged on mercilessly – the introduction of completely baseless allusions to Communist Czechoslovakia in the last one only made things worse.

I treated I Pagliacci in Edwards’ staging rather as an intelligent introduction to the remaining parts of Little Greats than as an innovative attempt to reinterpret the work. Shifting the action to contemporary realities spoiled nothing, but neither did it bring anything particularly new into the story of the bored Nedda, the crazy-jealous Canio and the vengeful, humiliated Tonio. The most interesting things took place in the third plane – among the blasé stage workers, killing time reading newspapers and munching on sandwiches, the distracted choristers and the talkative director’s assistants. Edwards skillfully plays out the details: for instance in the prologue, when the disheveled director walks onto the proscenium with coffee in a paper cup and the shopping in a plastic bag from Sainsbury’s hypermarket. All in all, it was a decent show, consistently planned-out and executed with a bit of a conspiratorial wink, which cannot be said of the deadly-serious Cavalleria rusticana in Sofulak’s staging. I don’t know how my English professional colleagues took it – at times, I had the impression I was watching Bryll’s Christmas Carol Night, and not a verismo opera. I found the gigantic fiberboard cross in the middle of the stage and the little red Fiat with Skierniewice registration plates that replaced Alfio’s wagon somehow bearable. I couldn’t stand Santuzza characterized as Maja Komorowska, or Mamma Lucia selling kiełbasa on ration cards in a shop with yawningly empty shelves, lit up by a red-and-white neon sign reading ‘Sklep Lucyna’ [‘Lucyna Shop’ – in Polish!]. Maybe I am not objective. It is not out of the question that my fellow countrymen and -women abroad get away with such ideas.

L’enfant et les sortilèges. Quirijn de Lang (Tom Cat), Wallis Giunta (Child) and Katie Bray (Female Cat). Photo: Tristram Kenton.

Let us drop a curtain of silence on the unfortunate vision of Mascagni’s opera and focus on the biggest trump card of Opera North’s autumn season: the phenomenal work of the entire ensemble, the commitment of the soloists, the ideal preparation of the chorus and orchestra. The latter came out much better under the baton of Martin André than in the Cav/Pag tandem led by Tobias Ringborg, which does not change the fact that both evenings were well able to satisfy not only a novice, but a spoiled opera connoisseur as well. The star of I Pagliacci was Richard Burkhard, a velvety-voiced, extraordinarily expressive Tonio who turned out the next day to be an equally convincing Lhotský in Janáček’s Osud. The otherwise superb Elin Pritchard (Nedda) and Peter Auty – a Canio with a ‘short’ top register, but sufficiently conscious of his role to bring the audience to its knees with his interpretation of the famous aria ‘Vesti la giubba’ – paled a bit in comparison with Burkhard. Silvio in the person of Rhodes was charming rather in his musicality than in the beauty of his voice – as in the later Cavalleria rusticana, where he portrayed the role of the betrayed Alfio. In Mascagni’s one-act opera, the front runners were the two ladies: Giselle Allen (Santuzza), a superb actress gifted with a dense soprano spinto rich in overtones, and Katie Bray (Lola) – a mezzo-soprano bringing to mind associations with the voice of the young Janet Baker, dark and shimmering like liquid gold. Both of them, furthermore, appeared the next day: the former as Míla in Osud, and the latter in the triple role of the Louis XV Chair, Female Cat and Owl in L’enfant et les sortilèges. Very young, but already showered with awards and sought-after by the managers of the world’s opera houses, Wallis Giunta turned out to be the Child of my dreams – sufficiently boyish in manner, but at the same time, wonderfully fresh in the purely vocal sense. It would take a long time to mention all of the soloists who appeared during these two evenings. So I will just mention two more veterans: the wonderful Britten tenor John Graham-Hall, who made me laugh until I cried in Ravel’s fantasy (as the Teapot, Arithmetic and Tree Frog) and moved me to even more abundant tears in the role of Živný; and Rosalind Plowright, who again disappointed me as Mamma Lucia, but on the other hand completely seduced me as the demonic Míla’s Mother, superb in terms of character and voice, in Janáček’s opera. I don’t understand why this great singer ‘flees’ into mezzo-soprano and contralto roles, since she still has at her disposal a deep dramatic soprano with characteristic sound, brilliant in less physically demanding parts that are, on the other hand, much more difficult in terms of expression.

Osud. Giselle Allen (Míla) and Rosalind Plowright (Míla’s Mother). Photo: Alastair Muir.

I was at four of the six shows in the Little Greats series. Little shows, but deeply moving. I admit that I was also moved by the attitude of Karolina Sofulak: a stage director who was the only one to break out of the production team and demolish the coherent concept of the whole. And after all, Tonio in I Pagliacci took such tender care of the little red Fiat model that was to play a taxi after the intermission in her Cavalleria rusticana…

Translated by: Karol Thornton-Remiszewski

The narrator of Richard Wagner’s novella A Pilgrimage to Beethoven mentions a performance by Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient with an admiration bordering on rapture. Her interpretation of the part of Leonore in Fidelio opens up the heavens before him. It frees him from the bondage of the night and brings him out into the light of day – like Beethoven’s Florestan. And no wonder: the comely singer turned out to be the first real German dramatic soprano, an artist who breathed the spirit into this oddly fractured masterpiece of Beethoven’s, and gave the wonderful tradition of Wagnerian and Straussian voices its beginnings. Did the youthful Wagner really see her onstage in this role? Highly doubtful. However, he certainly did have to do with her later, as a conductor and composer, and twelve years after the soprano’s death, he dedicated his sketch Actors and Singers to her. Schröder-Devrient also created several characters in his own works. In 1843, the memorable Leonore sang Senta at the Dresden première of Der fliegende Holländer.

Seeking out affinities between Fidelio and the earliest of Wagner’s operas to enter into the canon of his œuvre is a task as fascinating as it is dangerous. Fidelio was Beethoven’s only excursion into the world of the opera form, a work corrected many times by the dissatisfied composer and, if only for this reason, considered by many to be an unsuccessful experiment. In turn, Holländer is considered to be the vanguard of all of the wonderful things that appear in Wagner’s mature dramas. There is a bit of truth in this, and a bit of tall tale. I am more interested in the coincidences, chief among them the ‘instrumental’ treatment of the human voice, which in both operas must struggle with resistant material, carry over a dense orchestral texture, avoid the traps of an uncomfortable tessitura. There is a similar idea behind this procedure: Fidelio and Holländer mark successive stages in the departure from number-based opera in favour of continuous and coherent musical narrative. What is more interesting, however – especially from the viewpoint of contemporary stage directors – is that these are two operas about angels. Determined angels of deliverance in the form of women who put a stop to the torment of men. In Wagner’s œuvre, this motif later underwent a lengthy evolution. In Beethoven’s legacy, it appeared only once. It turned out to be so suggestive, however, as to give Wagner’s Senta a clear outline of Leonore moving towards the goal in spite of the outside world’s oppression, despite the doubts of her beloved chosen one.

I decided to leave myself the Wrocław Fidelio for later. On première day, I settled comfortably into my seat in the auditorium of a completely different house: the Art Nouveau-style Theater Lübeck, erected in 1908 according to the design of Martin Dülfer of Dresden – in place of the previous 18^th-century building in which Thomas Mann experienced his first operatic rapture at a performance of Lohengrin. My choice had fallen upon Der fliegende Holländer, which returned to the Lübeck theatre in June, in a new staging by Aniara Amos. I had planned the expedition well in advance. It had been difficult to resist the temptation to see Wagner’s ‘marine’ opera by the Baltic coast, in the main port of the Hanseatic League – on top of that, under the baton of Anthony Negus, who had led two shows there in October, before the production of Holländer planned for the next season at his home house, the Longborough Festival Opera – with the forces of the same team that prepared this year’s performances of Die Zauberflöte.

My concept of the theatrical career and achievements to date of Amos, a Chilean resident in Germany, was quite vague: aside from having started as a dancer, she studied operatic stage directing with Achim Freyer and Peter Konwitschny; after that, she did a dozen or more shows in Austria, Denmark and Berlin, as well as at smaller German houses. They were received quite coolly by the critics. And no wonder: the ambitions of Amos, who had taken the entire weight of staging the Lübeck Holländer on her shoulders, did not translate into artistic success. In a chaotically planned-out and predictably-lit space, a veritable pandemonium of Regieoper played out. Instead of a tale of a wandering sailor’s sins being redeemed by Gottes Engel in the person of Senta, Amos proposed the story of an (up to a point) passive woman who falls victim to mass violence. Senta (to whom the director assigned three alter egos – a little girl, a teenager and a live figurehead on the prow of the ghost ship) is abused by everyone: the paedophile Daland, the Dutchman manipulated by him, the possessive Erik, the beastly spinners and the lecherous sailors. The grotesquely-clothed characters gleefully squeeze all of the Sentas into the two bathtubs placed on the stage, representing not only the element of water, but also a symbolism drawn from homegrown psychoanalysis (white bathtub – innocence; red bathtub – lust; several people in the tub – sexual act). Just in case, Amos provided the men with phallic attributes, from a shotgun, a red paddle, telescopes dangling from the sailors’ belts, to a gigantic lobster attached to the crotch of an apparition from the Dutchman’s ship. To make things even worse, she made the Steersman the prime mover of the entire narrative, characterizing him half as Death, half as Klaus Nomi – the androgynous icon of 1980s pop culture. In the finale, Senta tears the weapon out of Erik’s hands, rids herself of her persecutors, takes her alter egos by the hand and goes off into the wild blue yonder. To hell with angelology.

Der fliegende Holländer in Lübeck. Oliver Zwarg (Dutchman) and Miina-Liisa Värelä, Senta from the premiere’s cast. Photo: Olaf Malzahn.

Nothing left to do but close one’s eyes and listen. And there was plenty to hear. The strongest point of the cast turned out to be Maida Hundeling in the part of Senta – a beautiful, dark soprano of powerful volume, with a wonderfully open top register and broad legato. Paling a bit against that background was Oliver Zwarg (Dutchman), a very musical singer with superb technique, but not sufficiently expressive in the role of the gloomy sailor condemned to eternal wandering. On the other hand, it had been a long time since I had heard such a good Daland (Taras Konoshchenko), gifted with a bass of extraordinary beauty, but at the same time flexible and deployed fluidly enough to bring out all of the expected and less-expected ‘Weberisms’ from this part. Bravos for Wioletta Hebrowska, who was able to restore at least a bit of believability to the character of Mary with her excellent vocal craft. A solid performance was turned in by Daniel Jenz, a tenor perhaps too light for the part of the Steersman, which he paid for at the beginning with a few flaws of intonation, but still: his tone was cultured and nicely rounded in the top register. The only disappointment among the soloists was Zurab Zurabishvili – a shrill Erik with a heavy tone and forced vocal production. I was also not thrilled with the chorus – while the ladies more or less handled ‘Summ und brumm’, the gentlemen were thoroughly disappointing in ‘Steuermann, lass die Wacht’, singing with an ugly sound, without conviction and often dragging behind the orchestra. A pity, because Negus – after barely a few days of rehearsals with the local philharmonic – put the whole thing together into an extraordinarily convincing narrative, captivating in its energy and rhythm from the first measures of the overture. The sharp staccati of the strings, the ‘wind’ of the flutes blowing up a storm in the rigging, the thundering tympani, juxtaposed a moment later with the heartbreaking lyricism of the redemption motif – all of this confirmed yet again the class of this extraordinary conductor, who reads every score like a novel, not as a collection of musical sentences masterfully composed but empty in expression. Let us add that Negus’ reading of Holländer had a surprisingly large dose of Meyerbeerian horror, accentuated by skillful diversification of the orchestral textures and colours.

I returned to Poland with my heart in my mouth – the dissonance between the opinions of musician and music-lover friends on the one hand, and the first press reports after the première of Fidelio on the other, knocked me solidly off balance. The greatest blows were taken by the creators of the staging: costume designer Belinda Radulović, and artistic director Rocc of the Slovenian National Opera – which prepared the show in co-production with the Wrocław Opera – who was responsible for the concept as a whole. In one respect, I must agree with the critics: in removing the spoken dialogues, the directing team did violence to the substance of the work. All the more difficult to forgive in that it disturbed the already convoluted narrative, which for many listeners not familiar with the work became completely incomprehensible. It was not much help to substitute them with fragments from Beethoven’s letters to the ‘Unsterbliche Geliebte’, which introduced greater confusion and were justified only in the context of this staging’s general message. To my amazement, however, that message turned out to be surprisingly innovative, depicted clearly and perhaps even getting to the heart of the composer’s intentions. Rocc decided to turn Fidelio into a metaphorical parable about the angel of salvation. Realized in a gorgeous minimalist stage design, superbly accentuated by the stage lighting, against the background of which played out a tale bringing to mind associations with the world of mysteries and miracles of ages past, full of references to Christian pictorial symbolism. Leonore appeared in two forms – as a woman-angel and as her mysterious emissary who descends into the dungeon in order to free Florestan. The golden emissary (in the person of actress Karolina Micuła) brings to mind Renaissance portrayals of the angel who came to give succour to St. Peter, arrested by Herod. Don Pizarro – like the Biblical Herod – is evil incarnate, a person rotten to the core, a soulless brute to whom all concept of morality is foreign. The story told by Rocc sounds like an ending to the episode from the Acts of the Apostles which is basically the last report from the life of Christ’s companion. St. Peter did not go free, but rather entered another dimension, from that time on teaching in the form of an angel. Florestan died, and with him, Leonore and all the other characters of Fidelio. The finale is a plebeian image of Paradise, in which the once-degraded prisoners, deprived by Pizarro of gender, identity – and finally, life – dance about in colourful raiment, gifted with white lilies symbolizing innocence and resurrection. This entire miracle was performed by ‘Ein Engel Leonore’ and Florestan, whom she had saved – they were clothed in gold, the splendour of paradisiacal light, a colour accepting no shadow, divorced from all that is earthly. ‘My Angel, my All, my own self,’ as Beethoven wrote in his letter to the Immortal Beloved.

Fidelio in Wrocław. Saša Čano (Rocco), Jacek Jaskuła (Don Pizarro), Peter Wedd (Florestan), and the two Leonores: Karolina Micuła and Sandra Trattnigg. Photo: Marek Grotowski.

It is astounding that in the case of Fidelio, director’s theatre fans – of whom there are not a few in Poland – demanded an unshaven Florestan in rags, chained to the wall of the dungeon. I am also amazed that the expectations of some critics did not coincide with the musical interpretation of Beethoven’s only opera. While joining in the praise for Maria Rozynek-Banaszak (Marzelline) and Aleksander Zuchowicz (Jaquino), I shall also take the liberty of pointing out the superb performance of Jacek Jaskuła in the part of Don Pizarro and the two superb episodes of the Prisoners (Piotr Bunzler and Mirosław Gotfryd). I hasten to report that Jakub Michalski, a recent graduate of the Voice and Opera Faculty at the Academy of Music in Wrocław, turned out considerably better in the role of Don Fernando than most of his counterparts familiar from recent performances of this opera. I will admit without duress that I do not share in the admiration for Saša Čano (Rocco), who has at his disposal a bass of quite ‘well-like’ vocal production, to make matters worse rhythmically insecure. Sandra Trattnigg (Leonore) is captivating with a gorgeously-coloured voice that is slowly evolving in the direction of a true dramatic soprano – for this reason, I will forgive her slight fluctuations in intonation and not completely open top register. I heard nothing reprehensible in the singing of Peter Wedd, who presented a somewhat different vision of Florestan – more youthful and ecstatic – a year ago in Paris. This time, he was a broken prisoner, whose coming out into the light was lengthier and more arduous – but fully in harmony with the vision of the stage director and of conductor Marcin Nałęcz-Niesiołowski, who led his Fidelio at sensible tempi pulsating with energy, at moments considerably slower than those to which such conductors as Fricsay have accustomed us, at moments as exuberant as those familiar from the best performances of Beethoven’s masterpiece. This applies in particular to the finale, in which the Wrocław Opera chorus displayed not only a full sound and balanced vocal production, but also superb diction and understanding of the text.

During the intermission after Act I, I allowed friends to talk me into moving downstairs from the balcony to the ground floor. Thanks to this, I had the opportunity to hear all of the details of the deeply thought-out, dynamically and expressively nuanced interpretation of Florestan’s aria, but also to fully appreciate the acting artistry of Wedd, who realized one of Rocc’s most interesting directing concepts in a riveting manner. His Florestan sings ‘Gott! Welch’ Dunkel hier!’ in a full light that he does not see – blind after his long stay in the dungeon. The moment when the blind prisoner regains his sight, when Leonore kisses his eyes, is a picture worth a thousand words. I myself no longer had any words – perhaps out of amazement that the effort of the Wrocław Opera’s ensembles slipped by so sadly unnoticed – as if everyone had gone deaf and blind.

Translated by: Karol Thornton-Remiszewski

The model of a Baroque box stage makes a staggering impression: meticulously reproduced at almost 1:1 scale, with a beautifully-painted proscenium, side decorations hidden in the wings and a few rows of wooden waves on the stage. Everyone cranes their neck to get a look at the immobilized elements of theatrical machinery. Having heard a delicate grinding noise, the viewers take a step back. The blocks begin to turn. A caravel hidden at the rear of the stage sails out onto the rolling wooden sea. A little closer to the proscenium, two sirens are playing in the waves. Their seductive soprano song is also heard from the earphones that visitors received at the entrance. The sound track has neither beginning nor end: the sensors installed in the transmitter localize the exhibits being viewed and play opera fragments associated with them. In this case, the beginning of Act II of Händel’s Rinaldo, in which the title character falls into the sirens’ trap. The guests return to the model several times each, crowding before it like children after a puppet show. The creaky noises of the blocks and winches echo all over the gallery.

Perhaps 15 or so meters further, yet another wonder, particularly meaningful to viewers who have never sung in a choir. On a wall bent into a half-circle, 150 photographs by Matthias Schaller, creator of the famous Disportraits. Each photo presents the auditorium of a different Italian opera house. In our earphones, we hear the song of the Jewish exiles from Verdi’s Nabucco, played in the form of a suggestive acoustic installation. Sound engineer David Sheppard provided the choristers of the Royal Opera House with separate microphones, so that the listener has the illusion of finding themselves among the crowd of singers onstage. I uncover my ears for a moment. Everyone around me is crooning ‘Va, pensiero, sull’ali dorate’ – probably not realizing that viewers standing nearby can hear them.

Photo: Dorota Kozińska.

Even just for these two installations, it is worthwhile to visit the Opera: Passion, Power & Politics exhibition that opened on 30 September at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. However, the overwhelming power of this exhibition, organized in collaboration with the opera at Covent Garden, lies elsewhere. It is not just a tale of the history of the form, now over 400 years old: it is an attempt to place it in the context of the history of transformations in politics, society and mores in Europe; and in a more distant perspective, an attempt to give a solid answer to the question of what its future will be in a world globalizing at lightning speed. The idea to organize the exhibition was born five years ago during a meeting of Kate Bailey, the newly-hired curator in the V&A’s Department of Theatre and Performance; Danish stage director Kasper Holten, the freshly-appointed director of the Royal Opera House; and Martin Roth, at the time director of the museum, who resigned his post before term, in 2016, as a protest against the results of the referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership in the European Union. The initiative was brought to fruition thanks to the determination of Bailey and Holten – the latter of whom, by the way, left the London opera in March, having rejected an offer to extend his contract. Roth died prematurely at age 62, less than two months before the exhibition opening: after a short and severe illness that doctors diagnosed shortly after he submitted his resignation from his post at the V&A.

The curator and the opera director were united in their vision to organize a so-called performance exhibition that would draw the viewer into a scrupulously-arranged space and give him or her a feeling of participation in this peculiar show. The museum director turned out to be the brains of the endeavour: having gotten his doctorate in Tübingen with a dissertation on museology and the art of exhibition in imperial Germany, the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich, he had spent his entire life afterward studying the historical and political conditions of art reception. Bailey proposed the framework for the exhibition: to show the complicated fortunes of Europe through the prism of seven opera premières in seven cities. The choice turned out to be difficult and could appear surprising to many music lovers, all the more so that Orfeo was missing – after all, the première of Monteverdi’s masterpiece at the Gonzaga court in Mantua on 24 February 1607 is considered the symbolic birth date of the opera genre. However, this was intentional on the part of the organizers:  to begin the narrative at a moment when the new form had left the palaces of the aristocracy and entered into public space. And it did so faster than expected, even within the lifetime of the composer, who acquired the appellation of its founding father.

Photo: Dorota Kozińska.

Over 300 exhibits, including installations, sound materials and video recordings, were gathered in the newly-opened Sainsbury Gallery – an underground gallery comprising part of the visionary Exhibition Road Quarter establishment, executed with panache by the young London design office of Amanda Levete Architects. Visitors wander in semi-darkness through an enormous space covering over 1000 m² in surface area, moving fluidly from era to era, from one aesthetic to another, from the city where the first gamblers’ den opened to the former capital of a certain empire that to this day carries on a dangerous game with the world’s fortunes.

The tale begins in Venice in 1642 at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo, with the première of L’incoronazione di Poppea – one of the first operas based on historical events, featuring characters of flesh and blood, which continue to speak to the imagination and sensitivity of a culturally-inclined European. In each object on display lurks an ambiguity similar to that in Monteverdi’s morally ‘uncertain’ opera.  Richly-adorned zoccoli, footwear on high wooden platforms, served both humble Venetian wives, protecting their feet from the waste matter of Venetian backstreets, and Venetian courtesans, who lured their customers with simulated height, hiding imperfections in their figure beneath the folds of richly ornamented gowns. The shapes of hand-blown glassware bring to mind equally sensual associations as the bluntly literal portrait of composer Barbara Strozzi, painted with viola da gamba in hand and voluptuous, flirtatiously exposed bust line. From Venice, we move to London at the beginning of the 18^th century, to the city where the whole world’s trade routes intersected, where Italian opera – thanks to the genius of Händel – was gaining an entirely new dimension reflected in, among other things, the engravings of Hogarth, who masterfully conveyed the transient triumph of castrato singing and brilliant stage machinery over the tradition of Shakespearean theatre and the legacy of other English authors. The circumstances of the Vienna première of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro in 1786 make viewers aware that the outbreak of the French Revolution was rather a failure than a fulfillment of European Enlightenment ideals. Milan – shown on the example of Nabucco, the early Verdi opera that brought him real fame, performed for the first time in 1842 at the Teatro alla Scala in that city – is revealed to the be composer’s destiny, a city which during the Risorgimento traveled a road as long and bumpy as that traveled by Verdi himself, and finally, 60 years after the première, escorted his remains on their final road to the Casa di Riposo to the sounds of ‘Va, pensiero’ under the baton of the young Toscanini. Hidden behind the calamity of Wagner’s Tannhäuser in Paris in 1861 is the story of the great renovation of the capital by Georges Haussmann. Richard Strauss’ Modernist opera would not have resulted in a wave of mad ‘Salomania’ if Salome’s première in 1905 had taken place anywhere besides Dresden – a bastion of European Expressionism. The convoluted fortunes of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk – presented with enormous success at the Mikhailovsky Theatre in Leningrad in 1934, and crushed two years later, during the Great Purge, when Stalin demonstratively left the show at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre after Act III – are one of the clearer illustrations of the havoc wreaked by censorship in totalitarian states.

Photo Dorota Kozińska.

The stupefied viewers move on to the next room, where they can sit down for a moment and immerse themselves in the sounds of 20^th-century and contemporary operas: from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess to George Benjamin’s Written on Skin and Kaija Saariaho’s L’Amour de loin. I don’t know how other visitors found their place in this acoustic landscape – I had the impression that the operatic masterpieces from after World War II revolved obsessively around the theme of aggression and violence. I am just as pained by the whistle of the guillotine in the final scene of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, as by the cries of the drowned boys from Britten’s Peter Grimes and the percussive machine gun salvos in John Adams’ The Death of Klinghoffer, an opera based on the dramatic events that played out in October 1985 on the deck of the MS Achille Lauro, hijacked by Palestinian terrorists.

But after all, opera – that most genuine, with a large orchestra, choir and a host of soloists – is still a living form and speaks to the deepest layers of human emotion. In Poland, a country with a tenuous tradition in this art form, directors obstinately try to convince us that that is not the case, that the only alternative is to ‘resurrect’ past masterpieces through theatrical directing, or seeking out new means of expression in compositions from the intersection between performance art, sound installation and visual theatre. All the greater impression is made by the statements of critics, theorists and artists collected in the London museum’s exhibition catalogue. People who are thinking about the position of opera in the development of contemporary cities make reflective conjectures about the role that the creators and audiences of today’s shows should play in this work. They repeat ad infinitum that listeners should be acquainted with this art form from childhood, and if it happens that parents or teachers have neglected their education in their youth, then just keep making the effort. Drag stone-deaf friends to the theatre, convince politicians to opera who are stuck in a mistaken conviction that they are dealing with an elite variety of art inaccessible to the listener. But above all – continually deepen their knowledge, listen, respond, focus on what is happening onstage, absorb the music with an open mind.

There are those who can do that. Evidence of this is the short essays preceding the more thorough discussions of the individual segments of the exhibition in the catalogue. The shaping of the character of Poppea is discussed in a lively and zestful manner by Australian soprano Danielle de Niese; the building of bridges between 18^th-century and contemporary audiences, by Robert Carsen, stage director of the production of Rinaldo for the Glyndebourne festival in 2011; the intricacies of the score to Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, by ROH music director Antonio Pappano, who directed their production in 2012; why a tenor idol of the world’s stages decided in his elderly age to take on the part of Nabucco, by Plácido Domingo; the corporeality of Tannhäuser, by stage designer Michael Levine; the traps of feminism in the interpretation of Salome, by conductor Simone Young; and the darkest corners of the feminine soul, by Graham Vick, stage director for two productions of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth.

I viewed the London exhibition with a growing sense that I am sometimes the Columbus, sometimes the Cassandra of Polish opera criticism. For years, I have been discovering stage directors, conductors and singers unknown in our country. For years, I have been crying, like Priam’s daughter, that opera theatre in Poland – despite appearances – stinks of naphthalene; despite its supposed avant-garde character, it constantly duplicates the same patterns, becoming obnoxiously bourgeois in the hope of applause from the indolent West. I was filled with all the greater joy by the words of Yuval Sharon, an American stage director and freshly-baked winner of a MacArthur Fellowship who opposes the plague of operatic co-productions, clearly emphasizing that this art form should be set in a peculiar context and speak to the listener in an understandable language that reaches to the very depths of the soul.

Because that is what this oddest of arts is like – it either strikes one to the very heart, or it is like water off a duck’s back. We left the exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in a state of near rapture. Young and old, experts and novices. Rumors of the death of opera appear to be greatly exaggerated.

Translated by: Karol Thornton-Remiszewski